


origins

by crickets



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-24
Updated: 2008-07-24
Packaged: 2017-10-02 05:59:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>charlotte has returned to the island to discover where she comes from, and discovers a familiar face along the way</p>
            </blockquote>





	origins

**Author's Note:**

> Words, 965. [Original Post](http://crickets.livejournal.com/171804.html).

Charlotte remembers summertime at her Uncle Harlan’s cottage in Connecticut, the cool lake behind his house where she learned to swim, the box full of dusty medals and trophies hidden away in his shed, the things she never asked him about.

They didn’t have much in common, Charlotte and Harlan, and for a long time, she hated those summers. The only time they really got along was when they were in the water. He taught her the backstroke, the butterfly, the breaststroke, the crawl – left, then right, and back again – like clockwork, every summer until she turned seventeen. In truth, it was only when she was in the water, surrounded and consumed by it, that Charlotte felt truly free.

She never had the opportunity to tell him that – that they were more alike than he would ever have a chance to know.

After Harlan died, Charlotte didn’t swim for a long time, couldn’t even bring herself to go near the water.

-

“You’re not supposed to be here,” Richard says from behind her.

She’s watching the waves on the beach and she recognizes that voice, even without turning to face him. He’s soft-spoken now, like he doesn’t quite believe in his own words. But she remembers his voice very differently – louder, angry, and full of conviction, raised over her uncle’s one night after supper, after she’d long gone to bed. Even then, it was foreign to her, but she knew it belonged to the handsome, dark-haired man she’d seen watching her from the back porch that afternoon – the one who looked at her over dinner like he knew more about who she was than she ever would, and who made her uncle, a usually imposing, broad-shouldered fellow, as nervous as a frightened school boy.

“This is Richard,” her uncle said to her as she walked up the path wrapped in a towel. “He’s, um, a friend from town,” he stumbled over his words. “He’ll be with us just for tonight. Isn’t that right Richard?”

Richard smiled and ignored her stammering uncle. “Hello, Charlotte,” he said as he held out his hand. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

She smiled then, took his palm in hers, and apologized for getting him wet. He seemed charming, and she was seventeen, and if her powers of hindsight had been greater, she might have punched him in the face instead.

“But I’m here, aren’t I?” she says now in the sand, and Richard nods in turn.

“You are.”

-

Time hasn’t aged him, but she had expected that, knowing what she knows. And now it is she who invades _his_ home, this place, this island, sits at his table, eating his food, fruit from the trees and fish from the sea. And whether he acknowledges it or not, it is Charlotte who belongs here – much more so than he does.

She follows Richard to a spot in the woods, a burial ground with three wooden spikes coming out of the brush, where he kneels in silence. (Wishing? Praying? She doesn’t know.)

She wants to ask him who they are, but she doesn’t, because every time she looks at him, she can see the loss of them in his eyes and that is all the clarification she needs.

_Family._

Still, a question remains unasked.

_Are they mine, too?_

“I want you to take me there,” she tells him after an hour, the sun disappearing behind the trees. It isn’t a request.

“There’s nothing there to see.” Richard gets to his feet, drops the pebble between his fingers back to the earth.

_”I don’t care,”_ she says, her jaw set.

“I do.”

-

She finds Richard at night, wakes him with a kick to the side, but he’s quicker than she thinks, and then she’s on the floor, pinned underneath him with tears in her eyes.

“At least tell me about her,” she cries, beating her fists against his chest. “At least give me that.”

“Charlotte,” he whispers, lifting himself off of her. “I never knew your mother.”

“But I thought?” She doesn’t finish the question.

“You thought wrong,” he says.

He stands, lowers an open hand to help her up.

“Tomorrow,” he says, “after dark. I’ll find you.”

-

He was right. There is nothing left to see but a heap of wood and brick, no bigger than a campfire, the underbrush of the forest having taken over any other remnants of whatever used to be there.

“What do you know?” she asks.

“I know you were the last, before Alex,” Richard says, his voice going soft when he speaks that name.

“Alex,” she repeats. “She was…”

“Killed,” he says, the emotion gone now, “yes.”

She shuffles through the small pile of debris, picks out a small, smooth stone. “May I keep this?”

“Of course,” Richard sits beside her and places a warm hand at her back.

Charlotte leans into his touch, lets her head slip below his chin, lets herself take more comfort in him than she will ever admit.

“Tell me something,” she says after a long time. “Did you know my father?”

He sighs and closes his eyes, and that is answer enough.

“What was his name?” She wants to know. It won’t mean anything, other than that he existed, that he was a real person, and that she once had a real father, a real mother, a real family, even if she was taken from them before she would ever know who they were.

Richard waits a long time before answering, pushes a lock of hair behind her ear, presses a kiss to her forehead.

Charlotte waits patiently, because she knows he’ll give her the answer. She’s known it from the second he came to find her on the beach.

“His name,” he says, “is Jacob.”

_-fin_


End file.
